The Nocturne Factor
by Glaivester
Summary: Summary: Fifth in the Essex Plan series. Kurt's true appearance is revealed at school. Principal Kelly is furious, but his daughter finds Kurt intriguing. The Friends of Humanity decide to make an example of him. And Nocturne manifests.
1. The SetUp

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The Nocturne Factor

Disclaimer: It all belongs to Marvel, except for my original characters, of course. But if Marvel wants to use them, they can. Feel free to post this, or any other Glaivester fic, anywhere, but please notify me so I can brag about it. 

Summary: Fifth in the Essex Plan series. Kurt's true appearance is revealed at school. Principal Kelly is furious, but his daughter finds Kurt intriguing. The Friends of Humanity decide to make an example of him. And Nocturne manifests.

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Chapter 1 The Set-Up

Thursday, December 20, 2003

Kelly looked around at the empty school building. It was night, and all of the students had left. Only two more days, Friday and Monday, and then he would be free! Free of high school, free of worrying about freak students. It was too good to be true. He would be the mayor come January 2.

At the Brotherhood of Bayville Boarding House, Todd Tolansky looked around with satisfaction. Finally the place was clean. He hadn't ever worried about it before, but now that the Xavier people were helping them out financially, he had decided to make the place look nice.

Freddy, Mystique, Lance, and Pietro. They, as well as Todd himself, were the only members left. Wanda had left to be at the Institute with Kurt. The Acolytes, even, were going to the institute more and more. Although they had never lived at the boarding house, they had always been housed at one of Magneto's remote bases.

Todd sighed. He was a Toad. No one, but no one, liked him.

"Hello."

Todd turned to see the person to whom the voice belonged. "Who are you?"

"Call me Natalie. Natalie Logan. I like that, I think." The girl walked over and plopped down on a chair.

Todd looked at the girl. "How old are you?"

"Fourteen."

Todd thought a second. He was seventeen, only three years older. So it wouldn't be entirely robbing the cradle, now would it?

"Don't I know you?"

"I don't think we've ever met, but perhaps my father knows you?" The girl squeezed her left hand into a fist, unsheathing three adamantium-laced claws. "I have decided to keep his name. As a last name, though. But I don't like the stuffy Institute. So I'm going here. Hello again, and howya doin', and which room is mine?" 

"You're X23? I've heard of you."

"Good. Then show me which room is mine, NOW."

"August 30, 2003," whispered Kurt. "Vow. It vas only four - less zan four months ago that you vere born. And now you look like a six-year old." Talia had been aging a year every two and a half weeks. Kurt's eyes began to tear up.

"Daddy, what's wrong?" asked Talia. 

"Nothing, liebe. It's just... you deserve more of a childhood. A full thirteen years, and then seven as a teenager, but - but you're going to be all grown up in a matter of a year. It's not fair."

"I'm sorry, Daddy."

"It's okay. I love you." Kurt hugged his daughter tightly, and she purred happily.

"Daddy?"

"Ja?"

"I was watching TV the other day. I like that show. The one with the cop. You know, the cop who piloted the starship."

Kurt thought a second. Then it dawned on him. "Oh, you mean the cop who also played Captain Kirk on Star Trek?"

"Yeah. Wot's his name again, Daddy?"

"T.J. Hooker, I think."

"Daddy?"

"Ja?"

"Aren't those my initials, too?"

"Ja."

"How 'bout calling me T.J. Hooker?"

"Uh... 'hooker' might not sound too nice. But we can call you T.J. if you like?"

"Please, please, Daddy? Call me T.J.?"

"Okay."

In Polotown, a fifteen-minute drive from Bayville, the state chapter of the Friends of Humanity were meeting.

"And we have discovered that there is a traitor among us," announced the lead speaker. "Or more precisely, a spy. One who is here only for the story. Charles Overton."

J. Jonah Jameson paled. Oh, no. His cover was blown.

"Or should I say, J. Jonah Jameson, the owner and editor of The Daily Bugle? Guards, arrest him."

Peter Parker watched helplessly as Jameson was led away by two burly men. 

"He will be made an example of. Humans who sympathize with mutants will be taught a lesson. We will use him to show not only that sympathizers are bad, but that they are no more likely to be spared the horrors that mutants bring than anyone else."

"How?" asked Parker.

"You'll see."

Far away in the shade, a blonde woman in a snow-white leotard watched intently. She formed and reabsorbed psionic blades of light in her left hand. She seemed to be talking to someone in the shadows, but he could not be made out.

"So, Tyrone. They've captured Jameson. Should we rescue him?"

"Not yet, Tandy. We need to find out what they are planning. If we give ourselves away, they will be able to look for us next time, and prevent us from finding out more. Let's wait until we have no more choice in the matter. If they attempt to kill him, we will save him."

Merith Essex, aka Ms. Dexter, was looking intently to the screen. Her "father" was giving her a magnetic scan that had a similar effect to a sonogram.

"Well," said Mr. Sinister, "the pregnancy is going as planned. "You will now need three times the nutrient broth as before your pregnancy. But I was right; your organs have gotten more fragile as a result."

Although the Essexes had organs and a skeleton like other people, they were less rigid and able to morph themselves so as to heal quickly and could be converted into a homogenous tofu-like substance when necessary. Whenever injured, the areas around the injury would lose their cohesion so that they could fill in again before reforming the lost organs. This contrasted with, for example, Death, aka Gorgeous George, whose entire body was a homogenous fluid all the time, as it had been since he had been a teenager. The pregnancy, however, had caused Ms. Dexter's body to lose some of its regenerative ability.

"Can we determine yet what the powers are likely to be?" she asked.

"Not entirely. The baby will be stronger than most from birth, that much we know. It should also have some psionic abilities, but beyond that I cannot say for certain."

"I feel... love. I am afraid that I will lose rationality over this child."

Mr. Sinister's gaze softened. "You mean that you will put the child's interests above the cause? The child is the cause, my daughter. Your feelings are normal, and I would have altered you so that you would not have them if I thought that they would be hurtful to our cause."

Ms. Dexter seemed relieved at this, and relaxed.


	2. Image Conscious

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Chapter 2 Image Conscious

Disclaimer: It all belongs to Marvel, except for my original characters, of course. But if Marvel wants to use them, they can. Feel free to post this, or any other Glaivester fic, anywhere, but please notify me so I can brag about it.

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Author's Note: I have drawn some illustrations. Please indicate in your review if you would like to see them. If so, I will email them to you.

Special warning: While this story is rated for audiences with some level of maturity (PG-13), some of the conversation in this chapter may require a measure of immaturity in order to appreciate it fully.

Friday, December 21, 2003

Kurt was talking to Wanda at school. Since joining the Institute, she had been allowed back into school. Technically, actually, she had just joined the school, having never gone to Bayville High, as she had not exactly been given all the proper papers when she was first released, and then being covered under the blanket expulsion of the Brotherhood later. The rest of the Brotherhood were getting home-schooled in preparation for the GEDs.

Her status as a mother was not known to anyone at school, and she intended on keeping it that way. Talia had, in fact, been given only minimal papers to prove her existence, as there would be too many questions that she did not want her daughter to face. She had been given an image inducer, but when she would finally be taken out to see people, Wanda intended on having her introduced as a visiting cousin. A different one each time, actually, as she would grow up too fast for people to believe that she was the same kid unless they were told about Sinister's experiments.

Talia understood in general that no one was ashamed of her, they were just afraid for her, and never having been in society, did not think herself to be missing too much. But she did have a sense of dissatisfaction about never being allowed out of the grounds of the mansion.

In any case, Kurt and Wanda were walking to their history class, when something unthinkable happened.

Connor Matthews, Duncan's younger brother [A/N Yep, I'm making a _Highlander _reference in their names], walked up to them. He was known as being a little bit of a brat, having been bullied by his brother a little too often. Now his brother was away at college, he was coming into his own.

"Hey, mutie, like your watch!" Connor snatched Kurt's watch off of his hand and put it in his pocket.

Connor had intended simply to tease the mutant by threatening to destroy what lookd like a very valuable watch. However, as soon as he had taken Kurt's watch off, he discovered he had done something far more serious and unnerving.

Kurt's image suddenly morphed into that of a blue, tridactyl, tailed, furry kid with pointy ears and digitigrade legs. Fortunately enough, he had worn his normal clothes to school that day, the ones that looked like his image inducer, rather than his uniform. [A/N Is anyone else irritated by the fact that Kurt is almost always wearing his uniform under his inducer - in school, at the dance, meeting Amanda's parents?] He was also glad that he had not responded to Evan's challenge to go to school naked one day. 

There was a collective gasp. Several students screamed. Other students got angry or decided to attack Kurt. But one girl in the background just looked on with interest. She turned to another girl who was looking on with horror, worried about what would happen to Kurt.

"Amanda," asked Laura Kelly to Amanda Sefton, "didn't you use to go out with him?"

"Er... yes."

"Did you know he looked like that?"

"Uh... yes."

"And you didn't tell me? Why not? I thought we were friends."

Amanda Sefton looked around uncomfortably. "He... he wanted to keep it a secret. He's shy..."

"And I suppose that the Principal's daughter is the last person you'd want to know? OR was it that you were afraid of me? That I might take him away from you?"

Amanda looked at Laura with surprise. "What do you..."

"You have the most interesting boyfriend in the school and didn't tell me?" She smiled at Amanda, scrunching up her face. "He would be nice to add to my collection." Laura had "collected," a lot of the boys in school. "Collected" was of course, a euphemism for a large quantity of other words, all giving the general impression that she had spent time with the boys without the benefit of clothes, and engaged in activities that, if she had not used the proper pharmaceuticals, would have resulted in a condition not unlike Ms. Dexter's. If we used the baseball four-base analogy, she had a home run record that Babe Ruth would have been proud of. 

"You want to 'collect' Kurt?"

"I've already collected three mutants. Pietro, Lance, and Freddy."

"Freddy? How in the world did you... I mean, you could have been crushed. How did you..."

"Vertically."

"Oh. Wait, what about Todd?"

"Oh, the one with the tongue? I'd like to, but I haven't seen him around recently. Oooo.... that tongue. I would really like to put that to use."

Amanda looked at her, disgusted. This was definitely_ not_ the thing to talk about in public. Not that she minded that this girl liked mutants. Even Todd, Amanda had actually begun to think him an okay fellow once she realized how put-upon and unfortunate he actually was. But she didn't want to hear a graphic description of how he could use his abilities for Laura's benefit, and it appeared that Laura was dying to tell her just that.

"Uh... good-bye, I gotta get to class!" said Amanda, and she walked over to Kurt.

Kurt was panicking, as a bunch of students looked like they were prepared to beat him up. Suddenly the history teacher, Mr. Larson, walked out.

"Stop this at once!" he bellowed. "We are discussing the Civil War again today, and I will not have my class interrupted by people wanting to throttle another student. I don't care what he looks like, he and the rest of you are going to get a lesson on the election of 1864 and how Lincoln managed to get re-elected when a few months earlier the war had been going poorly for the North! Now everyone get in here."

Kurt walked into class with Wanda at his arm, and the other students dispersed, grumbling. A number of students, Kurt noticed, had left rather than go to class with him. These were not the mean prejudiced students, Kurt surmised, the ones who would hurt him. These were probably just the frightened or startled ones.

It took only five minutes before Principal Kelly's voice came over the intercom. "Kurt Wagner to the office at once."

Once inside the office, Kurt was subjected to more of Kelly's anti-mutant feelings.

"So, Mr. Wagner. Not only are you a mutant, you are a freaky-looking mutant."

Kurt just glared at Principal Kelly. He really didn't need to deal with this, and he was beginning to think that he should just tell the Principal off.

"And you have the gall to hide it from everyone. Well, no more. You cannot take this watch that apparently makes you look normal to school any more. You have to go as you are."

"Fine. Now may I go?"

Principal Kelly sighed and put his fingers at the bridge of his nose. "Listen, just never wear that thing again, and I'm not going to give you any more trouble. I'm almost done as principal, today and Monday. Just be good so that I don't have to do anything to you. I am almost out of here, and I just don't want to deal with it anymore."

Kurt was surprised. Kelly was actually being forgiving. But not because he was feeling forgiving, just because he, quite frankly, didn't want to be bothered. Was that the key to tolerance? Apathy?

Walking back to class, Kurt ran into Laura, who had skipped class per usual.

"Hi, Kurt." She waved a little seductively at him.

"Hi, uh... I don't know your name..."

"Laura. Laura Kelly."

"As in Principal Kelly?"

"He's my father. Was he mean to you?"

"Vell, he doesn't seem to care right now. He just vants to get out of here."

"I know the feeling. Listen, Kurt, can I talk to you after school? I want to discuss starting a club for tolerance for mutants."

"Vell, okay, but it has to be qvick. I have to get back home." He didn't mention that he needed to get home to play some board games with T.J. Or that he and Wanda were going to be eating out alone that night.

"Oh, don't worry. It'll be quick." Laura flashed a brilliant smile. Her brown hair waved softly as she shook her head slightly.

Kurt was puzzled as to why his appearance had never been mentioned. Oh, well, he thought. Danke Gott for small blessings.

Laura took out her notebook. She looked at a long list of names written in pencil at the end was "Kurt Wagner." If she was lucky, by tonight she would have his name inked into the notebook.


	3. Graydon's Choice

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Chapter 3 Graydon's Choice

Disclaimer: It all belongs to Marvel, except for my original characters, of course. But if Marvel wants to use them, they can. Feel free to post this, or any other Glaivester fic, anywhere, but please notify me so I can brag about it.

As luck would have it, one of the members of the Friends of Humanity was in Bayville, and me managed to contact the state headquarters in Polotown. 

Graydon Creed was being soon brought before the state leaders, Murdock and Farmer.

"So, Graydon, do you expect us to believe that you didn't know that your half-brother was as deformed as this?" asked Murdock.

"I... I thought it wouldn't matter. He's a mutant regardless of what he looks like, so he's an enemy anyway."

"Listen," said Farmer, softening a little, "I know that you want to protect a relative, but this is war. Humans against mutants. You can't be partial to a monster just because he happens to be a relative. The blue woman is related to you as well, and yet you have never tried to protect her."

"It's just..." Graydon thought for a second. "He tried to be kind. I want him to be put away, I just... I just don't want him to be hurt. Just take away his... ability to reproduce so he can't create any more mutants, put a collar on him, and he'll be harmless."

"Graydon, the only solution is to kill them all. I can promise that I will try to make it quick and painless," said Farmer. At this, Murdock harrumphed, obviously disapproving of the idea of extending any mercy whatsoever.

"I'll tell you what," suggested Farmer. "To prove your loyalty, you need to bring Kurt here. Succeed, and you will move up in our ranks. Fail, and you will be kicked out."

Graydon gulped and looked at the people in front of him. Then his eyes steeled. These were the only people who had ever been really kind to him, understood his plight. Kurt was nice, but he was only one person. And the X-Men as a group had never treated him as an equal. He was there as a diplomatic envoy to the wild-type world, not because they thought him to be a valuable potential member.

"I will do it." He walked out, and as soon as he was in the hallway, he burst into tears.

Meanwhile, back at FOH's national headquarters in Washington D.C., Epstein and Carlton, two of the leaders, were discussing their latest plans.

"After the death of Dr. Malloy," said Epstein, our project at anti-mutant chemical warfare has been delayed. Only temporarily, but delayed nonetheless. So for the time being, we will content ourselves with increasing the anti-mutant sentiment in the US.

"How?" asked Carlton.

"We have plans to get a mutant, an obvious mutant, to attack J. Jonah Jameson. He has written articles in support of mutant rights before. If a mutant kills him, it will prove that mutants pose a threat to everyone."

"I thought he wrote an anti-mutant article a few months back."

"No, the article was 'Mutant Vigilantism: The REAL Mutant Menace.' He is basically opposed to all vigilantes. Superpowers per se do not bother him."

"I see. Who is the mutant?"

"One we captured in L.A. a few weeks ago. A teleporter. She is obviously a mutant." He pressed a button on a remote control and a metal screen lifted, revealing a room behind a glass wall. Chained to a wall was a young girl, fourteen perhaps, with hot pink skin and green pupil-less eyes. She had pointed ears, and marks on her forehead and eyes. She was wearing a shapeless navy blue cloak and did not appear to be conscious.

"Her name," said Epstein. "Is Clarice. Clarice Ferguson."

Mr. Claremont looked at the young man behind the screen. Having joined the army in hopes of turning his life around, and later having been transferred to covert ops, he would be an excellent specimen to test the new procedure on. He turned to the man behind the desk, a strange mustached fellow with green skin and a big forehead.

"So, with the new menace of our enemies using mutants or other superbeings against us, I'm sure you can see why we need to produce an American army of superbeings."

"I understand," said the green-skinned man to Mr. Claremont. "But you know, we already have such people at work here. Me, for instance. And I'm sure you've heard rumors of the Fantastic Four." He wondered at this representative of GeneDef Defensive Industries, what his real agenda was.

Claremont did not bat an eye at this. "But you don't have a program to make lots and lots of them. Just a few random people here and there created by accident."

"Me, for instance. Yes, I suppose getting a normally lethal dose of gamma radiation while carrying barrels of waste would qualify as an accident. Fortunately I have an analog of the X-gene that enabled me to survive gamma radiation."

"Ah, yes, the G-gene. IT gives you near-immunity to gamma radiation and the ability to project mental images of yourself into the astral plane."

The green-skinned man nodded his enormous head. "Yes, but those images cannot do anything until one is hit by gamma rays. Of course, there are limits to the images one can project of themselves; one cannot, I believe, become as big as a planet or become all-powerful. As far as I can tell, the images of one's self currently are restricted to intelligence and strength, and perhaps psionic abilities."

"Well, Mr. Sterns, we can do more than that. We have a process that can give normal humans superpowers, and I believe that the young man behind that window is just the person to try it on. His structure is such that we can put as many as five unstable M-genes in him."

"M-gene?"

"Mimicry. M-genes are artificial constructs that enable one to copy any genetic abilities of others, including X-genes and G-genes. Unfortunately, they currently are only able to copy half the potency of the copied genes."

"So you want to test it on this man?"

"Yes, Mr. Sterns."

"Very well." He pressed a button and began talking to the man behind the glass screen.

"Mr. Rankin? I believe we have a new assignment for you. Come here and we will explain it to you."

Calvin Rankin nodded from behind the glass and walked to the door.

[A/N Claremont is a reference to X-Men writer Chris Claremont. Epstein was referred to in my third "Essex Plan" story, _Father Figure_, when Wolverine mentions that one of the founders of FOH was Jewish and so FOH would not ally itself with the Red Skull. Dr. Malloy was referred to in _Father Figure_ as the doctor planning to drug mutants so as to disable their mutant powers. He was killed by Cloak and Dagger. The identities of Mr. Sterns, Calvin Rankin, and Clarice Ferguson are hopefully known to my readers. If not, wait and I'll fill you in later.]


	4. Friday After School

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Chapter 4 Friday After School

Disclaimer: It all belongs to Marvel, except for my original characters, of course. But if Marvel wants to use them, they can. Feel free to post this, or any other Glaivester fic, anywhere, but please notify me so I can brag about it.

Kitty was very pleased with herself. She had managed to get Cain to agree to go with her. It wasn't really a date, but it was sort of intimate and would be nice.

She was going to temple that evening.

She had never really cared about such things before. Her family was not particularly religious. They did celebrate the more popularly known holidays, such as Hanukkah, but only in the sense that they went through the motions. Most of their decorations were indistinguishable from Christmas ones, although they tended more to lights than to anything specifically Christmas-y like Santa Claus and obviously nothing of a religious nature.

But having almost been killed by a virus designed specifically to hurt her people, Kitty began realizing that she had never really given much consideration to her Jewishness. Now she was beginning to question whether that was the right thing to do. It bothered her that an aspect of her identity that people were willing to kill her for, she generally ignored.

So she decided to go to temple. Perhaps she wouldn't enjoy it, she surmised, perhaps it wasn't something she'd want to do. Perhaps she would never appreciate the more observant ways of some Jews. But she felt that she owed it to herself to at least see what it was all about.

As for Cain, he had recently become interested in religion. He realized that he had never really thought about it much, and as part of his continuing rehabilitation from his out-of-control behavior earlier, had decided to check out what different religions there were and see what it was all about. He had already followed Kurt to mass and Jamie to a Baptist sermon. Now he was willing to try to see what Kitty's faith was. So he was going with her to see what it was like.

[A/N I am not right now going to try to describe their experience at temple. Being a Baptist, I am not really an expert in what a Jewish service is like. It may be similar to a Christian service, or it may be very different, for all I know. But not wanting to be inaccurate, I am going to forego the description until I have done a little more research, at which point I will update this chapter. If any of my readers know more about this subject than me, feel free to explain in the reviews].

Kurt, on the other hand, was looking forward to a date with Wanda. He would quickly see what Laura wanted for the club, and then after discussing it with her, would "BAMF" home to play with Talia and then to get ready.

So when he left school, he immediately sought out Laura. She was there, right outside the entrance of the building.

"Hi, Laura. Vhat did you vant to talk to me about? How can I help you start a club?"

"Well, can we talk somewhere a little more private? I don't want Dad to see you talking to me. He'll freak out."

Kurt nodded and touched Laura on the shoulder. Then he teleported them both to a spot about a mile away near a park.

"Well," asked Laura, getting all doe-eyed, "I was thinking. What is the easiest way to make someone appear non-threatening?"

"Er... I don't know."

"Show them that they can be sexy. I mean, no one would see mutants as threatening if they saw them as sexy, right?"

"Huh?"

"What you need to do, Kurt," and in saying this, Laura stroked Kurt's hair, "is that you need to show the world that you are a furry blue love machine."

Kurt stared at Laura as she began to unbutton her blouse. BAMF. He disappeared, leaving her in the clearing by herself.

"Hmm..." Looking at the sulfurous smoke Kurt left behind, Laura got a little upset, and then just smiled and relaxed. So this wasn't going to be easy. All the sweeter when it finally happened. She began walking back to her house.

That night, while Kitty and Cain were at temple, Tabitha was in the danger room with Remy, playing a duel between her explosives and his. Each was able quite easily to dodge the other's projectiles, and to throw more back at their opponent. Tabitha was having a great time, and was about to suggest that they put on bathing suits and play like that, when the lights flickered for a second and then went out.

Everyone rushed to the foyer to see what was the matter.

Suddenly the lights came back on and Magneto walked through the front door, holding his head. "Oooooo... it hurts."

"What happened?" asked Wanda, somewhat less than interested. Magneto was here to babysit his granddaughter along with Mystique, but Wanda had been hard-put to be convinced to let him. She suggested that her father might, for all she knew, put Talia in a mental institution while they were away.

"I... I was hit by a dart or something." Magneto did not have his helmet on, and so was vulnerable to such attacks from behind [A/N in keeping with XME, Magneto can resist most telepathy with or without his helmet, so his helmet mainly protects him from physical attacks]. "I lost control of my powers temporarily. I think I may have cut your power off or something.

"Yup. You did," responded Wanda.

Xavier, who was in his bathrobe, wheeled over and looked at the back of Magneto's head. "I can't see any problems," he said quickly, "but maybe Hank should check you out."

He motioned to Hank, who took Magneto downstairs to the infirmary.

"Maybe this means that Wanda and Kurt's date should be cancelled," commented Mystique, who was standing there wearing uncustomary jeans and a tank top.

While Magneto was being examined to the infirmary, Logan, Scott, Remy, and Piotr, the latter two of which were staying over the weekend, walked around outside trying to see if they could find the attacker. Jean and the Professor were using Cerebro to find anyone, but they were not successful, and everyone else was searching the inside of the house in case the attacker had come in, except for Jamie, who was watching TV with Talia.

Mystique, who was paired with Storm, suddenly noticed something. "You know, I didn't see Rogue in the foyer..."

They rushed to Rogue's room and got there to find Sauron hovering over her. Mystique ran in and hurled a punch at Sauron, knocking him back. He immediately fled out the window, but Mystique by mistake brushed against Rogue with her arm.

Mystique gave a gasp and collapsed to the floor. She immediately morphed into... well, into a nude Mystique. Apparently she had not actually been wearing any clothes when she had come down the stairs when the lights went out, and had just morphed their appearance.

Suddenly it hit Storm that the professor had been wearing a bathrobe when they had gathered in the foyer. "Naaaaa, it couldn't be..."

As it turned out, both Rogue and Magneto had been drugged with something that appeared to be slowly draining their mutant powers, as well as, in Rogue's case, temporarily knocking her out. But even after she regained consciousness, Rogue's powers were lessening, until finally, about an hour later, they were gone.

"Don't worry," said Beast, "from what I can discern, this should only last another twenty-four hours at most. I don't know why Sauron would do this... or more precisely, why Sinister would have this done."

It was decided that Sauron probably would not trouble them any more that night, and so Kurt and Wanda left on their date.

It was rather unremarkable, but that was good, given all of the excitement that had happened recently.

Wanda ordered pasta, and Kurt ordered fish. He had eaten a pizza beforehand so that he wouldn't be too hungry at the meal and order three or four servings.

What they didn't know were that both of their parents were having interesting experiences at the mansion.

First, Mystique had left Magneto to spend "quality one-on-one grandparent time" with T.J. She went up to the Professor's room and when Jean walked by a few minutes later, she heard some very strange noises. Logan walked by at the same time, and sniffed the air.

"Oh, no!" Logan's eyes narrowed. That bi- I mean that witch was just acting all along!"

Jean looked at Logan. "Who? I can't read whoever is in there..."

"It's Mystique! That concerned mother act was just a ruse so she could invade and kill the Professor!" He clawed open the door and burst in, with Jean close behind.

Suffice it to say that Mystique was indeed doing something to Xavier, but it wasn't killing him. Suffice it to also say that Xavier was not entirely paralyzed from the waist down, just his legs. And finally, it warrants mentioning that Logan and Jean ran out of the room, holding their burning eyes.

Later that evening, Xavier explained to Logan.

"You have to understand, I get really, really lonely sometimes."

About half an hour after leaving Magneto alone with Talia, Mystique came in to play a game with her. Magneto left, and suddenly his eyes glossed over. He walked up the stairs, and into Rogue's room, where she was napping. She got up and stared back at him with the same glassed-over eyes.

Ten minutes later, he left the room, and imagined that he had just gone up to use the facilities. For her part, Rogue assumed that she had not woken up at all.

[A/N So this story contains Xavtique, and Rogueneto (kind of). Yes, that was what Rogue and Magneto were doing. Three guesses as to what is going to happen from it].


	5. Meanwhile, at the Brotherhood House

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Chapter 5 Meanwhile, at the Brotherhood House

Disclaimer: It all belongs to Marvel, except for my original characters, of course. But if Marvel wants to use them, they can. Feel free to post this, or any other Glaivester fic, anywhere, but please notify me so I can brag about it.

Friday night.

Todd and Lance were walking together to the store to get groceries for the next day. After everything had gotten weird when Wanda was pregnant, the Brotherhood had gotten along a lot better and started to act more like a team.

Normally, they would have taken Lance's jeep, of course, but the store they were going to was only half a mile away, and Todd had really needed to talk to Lance about something, and this afforded them some privacy.

"So," asked Lance. "What do you want to ask me?"

"Lance, have you ever liked - liked someone who was too young for you?"

"What's her name."

"Natalie."

"How young?" 

"Fourteen."

"I'd say be careful, wait until the age difference is less pronounced, say three or four years. I suppose you could go out, but really, that's a little too young to be getting serious with someone."

"Uh... another question. Have you thought that the place has been rather empty since Wanda left, yo? Have you wondered what we should do with the room? Perhaps someone would like to use it, we could take in a boarder maybe who has no where else to-"

"Is this related to your first question."

"Uh - no."

"Todd?"

"Uh - well, yes, actually. I met a nice girl who wants to stay with us, yo, and..."

"She's fourteen."

"So? I've been on my own since I was thirteen, yo. She needs some people to take her in and give her, I don't know, a family, sort of."

"Why not direct her to the Institute?"

"The X-Mansion? Nah, she doesn't want to go there right now. She wants to be a littlem ore free-wheeling. You know, like Boom-Boom. Uh... there is something else you should know about her."

"What?"

"She isn't exactly - normal. I mean, she wasn't produced by the birds and the bees, yo."

"Are we talking about Slayer here [A/N Slayer, aka Lyssa Summers, for my new readers, is an OC. Slayer is to Cyclops as X23 is to Wolverine, except that she was made by Sinister instead of HYDRA. Her powers are like Cyclops', except that her eyes shoot green optic blasts and she uses emerald quartz to contain them]?"

"No, we're talking X23, yo."

"Sounds familiar..."

"The X-Men might have mentioned her, she was Wolverine's female clone. Made by some terrorist organization or something."

"Wolverine? He'll have our hides if we..."

"She didn't want to stay with him, and I'm not planning on takin' advantage of her, yo. Won't he be happy she has a place to stay?"

"Maybe."

The relationship between the two groups of mutants had changed considerably in recent months, not so much after Wanda's pregnancy as after she had given birth and the baby was clearly Kurt's. Magneto had confided in the Brotherhood that he still believed that there was a war brewing and that he was determined to make certain that mutants won. However, he was going to try to be less manipulative and to try to avoid firing the first shot, as it were. Basically, he was going to try to be more open about his plans rather than being the mysterious and feared leader.

As for the relationship with Xavier, Magneto had explained his new position to Xavier, but not to the rest of the X-Men. They had basically agreed with each other that they would worry about the coming war, if it were t occur, later, because more pressing concerns were apparent right now. If Sinister or Apocalypse were to get their way, there would be no doubt that both mutants and wild-types would be devastated. Magneto was particularly concerned because despite his hatred of the wild-types, he had never wanted to kill them all, just to put them under his thumb so that they could not hurt him [A/N this is how Magneto is in the version of XME I am writing]. He had thought that it might eventually be necessary to use sterilization to reduce their population, but for the most part he had always planned on killing only wht would be needed in order to assert mutant dominance. 

"Well, Lance," said Todd, we're at the supermarket, yo."

Back at the boarding house, Fred was watching some episodes he had taped about some show with vampires, and was sniffling.

"No... he can't die. Poor Screed. He was my favorite character."

Pietro was unimpressed. "He's a stupid vampire who lives in the sewers, Fred. He doesn't even suck human blood, he likes rats. Good grief are you a baby." 

"Well, I like his character. It's too bad the show only lasted three seasons."

Suddenly there was a knock on the door. Pietro ran to open it, only to be hit with a Taser. He screamed loudly, but by the time Fred got up, he was only able to see a red car peeling out of the driveway.

Graydon Creed looked down at Pietro, who was slumped over in the back seat.

"I could never get into the Institute," he explained to the unconscious mutant. "But I am certain that Kurt will try to rescue you if I use you as bait. After all, you are his daughter's uncle." He paused for a moment. "I don't want to do this, believe me. But just because Kurt may be one of the good ones, doesn't mean that we can trust you guys. It is either you or we. And we will not surrender this planet to mutants. I'm sure that you understand."

Pietro did not reply, not being even aware of what Graydon was saying.

"If it makes you feel any better, I have avoided mentioning little T.J. So maybe she will get to survive a little longer, as no one knows of her existence."

Graydon's face suddenly burned with shame, as he realized that he was mainly going to get Kurt killed not because he personally wanted to because of his ideology, but because it would fit his personal ambition to move up in the Friends of Humanity, and, truth be told, because he was too much of a coward to leave them. It wasn't that he didn't agree that mutants needed to be eradicated, it's just that he thought that Kurt might be an exception to the rule.

But he drove on, nonetheless.


	6. Rogue Loses it

****

Chapter 6 Rogue Loses It

Disclaimer: It all belongs to Marvel, except for my original characters, of course. But if Marvel wants to use them, they can. Feel free to post this, or any other Glaivester fic, anywhere, but please notify me so I can brag about it.

Saturday morning.

Farmer was talking with Carlton at National FOH HQ over the phone.

"Listen," said Farmer, "I want to tell you about the person who brought Jameson to our attention. His name is Graydon Creed. He's a good kid, and should do well in our organization. But he has one or two problems - a semi-loyalty to his half-brother who is a mutant, and his parents were mutants themselves. Although they apparently abused him for his wild-type-ness and so that is why he joined us in the first place.

Carlton thought for a moment. "So, when should we do it?"

"Monday. Send Jameson back to work, and have him meet Miss Ferguson on the top of the Bugle. She will push him off to his death with 'Death to Humans' written on his forehead. Any later and people will notice Jameson is missing. As it is, they've only not noticed because of his proclivity for sneaking away.

"Monday morning it is, then."

Meanwhile, at the Institute, Rogue was crying in the bathroom.

Kurt knocked on the door, and when she told him to come in, he did, finding her sitting on the toilet, fully clothed, sobbing her eyes out.

"Vhat's wrong?"

"Ah... Ah was violated last night. Ah don't even remember it. Ah... Ah discovered this morning."

"How?"

Rogue shot a dirty glance at Kurt. "Kurt, Ah am... Ah was... a virgin."

"So vas I before that thing at the teenager club vith Vanda [A/N see The Essex Plan]. But I didn't know that ve had done anything until she came back vith a blue, three-fingered baby."

"Kurt. It's different. Ah am a girl. Remember sex ed?"

"Oh. OH. Vait, you mean zat you... er... lack certain... zings zat used to be... zere?" As usual, Kurt's accent increased when he became nervous.

"Yes," stated Rogue coldly. She grabbed Kurt's hand with her ungloved hand. Kurt started for a moment before remembering that she had lost her powers temporarily. "Ah... Ah think it has something to do with Sauron and his attacking me."

"Sauron deed zis?"

"Kurt, calm down. You're sounding... like some German out of a Looney Tunes cartoon."

"Sauron. Did. This?"

"No, Ah... Ah was not this way when Ah was being examined. But Ah think Ah was... bred with someone here. Like you and Wanda..." Realization dawned on Rogue's face. "Magneto! He was attacked too!"

"So he's the one vith whom you..."

"Oh, no!"

Wanda barged into the bathroom. "What is wrong here? I heard you sobbing from my room."

Kurt looked at Wanda. "Remember vhen you and I conceived Talia?"

"Of course not. We were drugged by Mr. Sinister, remember?" Wanda was not at her best in the mornings.

"Vell, it looks like Rogue just had a similar experience."

Wanda looked shocked, then concerned. "With whom?"

"Your dad," sniffed Rogue.

"That's not funny!" screamed Wanda, who was about to hex Rogue through the wall.

Rogue looked up and sniffed again. "No. No it's not. But he and Ah were both attacked last night. And then Ah wake up this morning to find mah self deflowered. Now, unless someone at the Institute decided to rape me in my sleep, the only possibility that Ah can see is that it was another of Sinister's breeding experiments. And seeing as we both were attacked by someone, in my case, Sauron, we're the most likely ones to be manipulated. Probably the chemical we were injected with left us open to suggestion or something."

Wanda just stared. T.J., wearing cute bunny pajamas, walked in, and stared at Rogue.

"Auntie Roguey? What's going on. Why are you sad?"

"Ah'm likely pregnant."

"Pregnant? You're going to have a baby? That's bad?"

Kurt didn't want to explain the specifics to T.J., particularly anything that might give her a hint of the fact that her existence was brought about by what basically amounted to third-party rape. She knew that babies came out of women, that a man was needed for a woman to have a baby, and that the man and women should love each other, but the specifics, including the idea that there was a particular act involved, had not been explained to her. Moreover, she was always under the impression that Kurt and Wanda had wanted to have her, and the fact that she was the product of Sinister's breeding experiments had never been explained in her presence.

"It's... it's complicated," explained Wanda. "It involves... well, let's just say we'll explain when you are a little older."

"Was Rogue naked with someone?"

"VHAT?" screamed Kurt.

"I saw a man and a woman get naked on TV and then later they said they were having a baby. Only she didn't know if the baby was his or the gardeners."

"When did you see this?" asked Wanda, seething.

"With Tabby. She had taped it and was watching and I came in and watched with her."

"Tabby and her da... stupid soap operas!" hissed Wanda, catching herself before she swore in front if her daughter. Since Tabitha had rejoined the Institute, she had been taping soap operas every day. Apparently, she was not above watching them with little kids.

"If Rogue got naked with someone, is her baby the gardeners?" asked T.J.

"We don't have a gardener," answered Kurt.

"Then does that mean she can't be pregnant?"

"Uh, T.J.? We're having waffles for breakfast," suggested Wanda.

Talia squealed and forgot all about nudity, gardeners, and pregnancy. She ran down to the kitchen on all fours, leaving Wanda behind.

"Listen, Kurt, you're good at the sensitive stuff. You deal with this." Wanda left and went after T.J.

Kurt sighed and began talking with Rogue.

A few hours later, Beast was examining Rogue, and finally made a comment. "This is strange, but it appears that your body chemistry will not allow you to take a morning-after pill or use any form of post-coital birth control. You would almost certainly get very sick."

"Is this part of my mutation?"

"Actually, I have not seen this in you before, and it is very, very obvious. Any blood tests I ran would show something odd, and its interaction with various hormones would be quickly revealed."

"So what are you saying?"

"Whoever arranged this between you and Erik - if it is Erik you were intimate with - obviously wants to make certain that you are pregnant and that you carry the baby to term. If it is Mr. Sinister, it does make sense that he would do something like this."

Rogue had a thought. "Does this mean that if I do have a baby, Sinister also has a way to control it?"

"Possibly. I don't know. Technically, we can't even tell if you are pregnant just yet, but it appears to be highly likely."

Suddenly there was a ring at the door. Scott and Bobby answered it. It was Todd and Lance.

"Have you seen Pietro?" asked Todd to Scott.

"Since when?"

"Since last night, yo?"

"No."

Lance frowned and took over from Todd. "Do you have any idea where he might be?"

Scott put a hand on his chin. "I'm going to assume that this means that Pietro is missing. Sorry, I have no idea where he might be."

Todd glanced behind him to see Laura walking up the path. "Yo! That's the principal's daughter!"

"I am here to see Kurt," she intoned sweetly.


	7. Wanda vs Laura

****

Chapter 7 Wanda vs. Laura

Disclaimer: It all belongs to Marvel, except for my original characters, of course. But if Marvel wants to use them, they can. Feel free to post this, or any other Glaivester fic, anywhere, but please notify me so I can brag about it.

"Whatcha wanna see Kurt for?" asked Todd.

"I needed to give him some papers that he let me study in study hall. He forgot to take them back."

"Oh, sure," said Todd. "I'll take you there." He grabbed Laura and hopped her right up to Kurt's room's door, and then hopped back to the entry, before Scott could say anything.

"Hmmm..." thought Laura. "He's next on my list. With such powerful legs, he must be very good in..."

"Hallo?" asked Kurt as he opened the door. "You!"

Laura grabbed Kurt and pushed him into his room. "Silly little elf!" she purred. "Thought you could escape me!" Then she looked to her right. On the floor was a game of Chinese checkers, and sitting next to it was a little girl who looked a lot - a _whole_ lot - like Kurt. 

"You have a sister?" asked Laura, not losing her seductive tone.

"Er... yes, actually, but she's not her - she's not she - she's not my sister."

Laura narrowed her eyes and asked another question. "Niece, then?"

Kurt wasn't certain what to do. If he acknowledged T.J. as his daughter, it would be problematic. If he didn't, though, she might not understand why and get offended. As it was, the decision was out of his hands.

"I'm his daughter."

Laura choked. "She's - she's got to be five at least! How... oh my... you had sex when you were..."

"She's only three-and-a-half months old. She ages qvickly," said Kurt without thinking.

"Daddy, what is sex?" asked T.J.

"It's what Kurt and I are going to do!" smiled Laura.

"No, ve are not."

"Are you gonna get naked?" asked T.J.

"It depends," purred Laura, "is that how he wants it?"

"Nein!" Kurt was bristling. "go avay!"

Laura was very good at intuiting things, and she realized that Kurt's daughter was a secret from much of the outside world. "I'd love to know a little more about your daughter," said Laura. "You really should talk about her more at school, or maybe I will tell everyone what a nice little daughter you have."

"Leave her out of zis."

"Well, there's no reason for the school to know. Not if you're really, really nice to me."

T.J. was aghast. Her telepathic powers, however slight, were enough to read thoughts that were projecting as loudly as Laura's. And what Laura was planning on doing to Kurt was icky. T.J. scampered off to tell her mother.

"Blackmail is a very bad idea," hissed Kurt. A sudden very strong paternal instinct was taking over. No one, but no one, threatened to expose his daughter to the world. If need be, he would grab Laura in a big bear hug, and teleport around the yard until he found out exactly how many rapid consecutive teleports it took to kill someone.

Laura, however, was determined to intimidate Kurt and had no concept of how heavily instincts could weigh on him if he let them. Like Logan and Rahne, he was deep down a little animalistic and could go crazy if provoked enough. But Laura simply assumed he was too rational to ever consider hurting her, because of all the repercussions. What she didn't count on, of course, is that logic could be pushed aside with a strong enough provocation.

"Oh, come on. Just one time, and I'll go away." Laura had no idea who the mother was, and didn't plan on breaking the family up. She wanted to add Kurt to her "collection" and then move on. She got bored easily and rarely "collected" the same person twice.

"Zreaten mein tochter again and I vill kill you." Kurt was suddenly looking very animalistic now, and Laura was finally a little frightened.

"Take a number," came a voice. It was Wanda. Holding up her hands, she used her mutant abilities to make Laura trip and fall on her back. "Listen, you little tramp. You like being in bed? If I catch you near Kurt again I can make it so that you'll be in bed for a long time. And your only companion will be your IV drip tube. Understand? To show she meant it, Wanda caused Laura's right wrist to sprain.

"Ahhhh..." Laura screamed.

"Leave, now!" Wanda had never looked so angry in her life, except of course on matters involving her father or brother. Laura took one look at her and ran away as fast as she could.

T.J. ran into the room. "Mommy, I saw things. Icky things."

"Where?" Wanda asked sharply.

"In... in dat girl's head. She was thinking about - icky things."

Wanda sighed. This was not how she wanted her daughter to discover about the birds and the bees. For that matter, she was about three years younger than Wanda had hoped her to be when they had this little talk. Actually, she was about nine to ten years younger, but Wanda was already thinking about her in terms of the age she appeared to be.

Suddenly the phone rang. Wanda picked it up and answered it. "Hello. Who is this? Oh, Kurt, it's one of your friends. He wants to talk with you."

"Hello, Kurt," came the voice from the other end of the line. "How are you doing?"

"Who are you?"

The voice suddenly changed. "I guess you learn to disguise your voice when living with a shape-shifter, don't you?"

"Graydon?"

"What?" shrieked Wanda.

"Listen, Kurt, don't tell her what I tell you. Tell her that I am just calling to say hello and that I am confused about being the half-brother of a mutant. Oh, yeah, and I need advice."

Kurt gave Wanda the information.

"Now, Kurt, listen carefully. I have Pietro. Come and see me, alone, and I will release him to you. Otherwise, I will kill him."

"Vhy?"

"I needed to talk to you. I have a proposition for you, a way to save your daughter from the holocaust to come. But I needed insurance that you would see me. Tell no one."

Kurt thought for a second. He had been down this road before with the Red Skull. Yet, he couldn't let Pietro die on account of his fears.

"How do I know..." Kurt stopped himself. "How do I know that you are being truthful about your confusion?"

Graydon nodded on the other side of the line. "Ah, you mean how do you know that I have Pietro?" He put Pietro on the line.

"Help!" hollered Quicksilver. "Someone help me!"

"Oh, if that doesn't convince you, I searched his body for identifying marks. He has a scar on his right outer thigh. He says he received it in a fishing accident - his hook caught on his leg."

Kurt frowned. He would have to find a way to verify this with Wanda without her finding out about Graydon kidnapping him.

"Okay, so what did you want to tell me?"

"Meet me at Murphy's Dock in fifteen minutes."

"Okay, vell see ya, bye-bye."

"Good-bye."

Kurt looked at Wanda. "Na... Graydon just wanted to say 'Hi.' He's really confused." Kurt scurried away. 

Talia looked at her mother. "He's scared. Murphy's Dock."

They told Scott, and he decided to make certain that Kurt didn't go. In five minutes, everyone in the mansion knew, and they decided to send a small team, consisting of Kitty, Wanda, and Remy, to the dock to scout things out.

As for Lance and Todd, they were angry with Fred. He had assumed that Pietro was just yelling because he was happy and that the red car had belonged to a girl. Suddenly it became clear that Pietro had not spent the night "fast, furious, and often," as he so often said, and as Fred had assumed.

Unfortunately, no one could find Kurt and it became very clear that he had already teleported to Murphy's Dock to meet Graydon.

They all rushed to get there in time, but all they could see as they got there was a red car peeling away. It appeared that Kurt had been kidnapped.


	8. The Master Plan

****

Chapter 8 The Master Plan

Disclaimer: It all belongs to Marvel, except for my original characters, of course. But if Marvel wants to use them, they can. Feel free to post this, or any other Glaivester fic, anywhere, but please notify me so I can brag about it.

"Sorry, Kurt. But I need to do this. You're lucky I was told to capture you and not to kill you."

Kurt harrumphed. He had been drugged so that he was mostly paralyzed, but he could breath and talk, although not teleport. "I am not certain what they want with you," Graydon continued. "I think that something big is going down. In any case, you, Pietro, and some other mutant - a teleporter like you, I believe - are going to New York."

"What do you want?"

"I don't know what is going to happen. I was just told to bring you to New York."

Meanwhile, the X-Men and the Brotherhood were trying to follow in the X-Van, and various other vehicles, but Graydon had gotten too far away.

Back at the X-Mansion, Wanda was comforting Talia. "Daddy will be all right. Don't worry," cooed Wanda. Talia was, however, inconsolable, sobbing as she held on to Wanda so hard that it hurt.

"Mommy," asked Talia suddenly. "I... I know where Daddy is."

"What?"

"I can sense him, Mommy."

Wanda was impressed. So Talia was beginning to be able to control and use her telepathy. It was apparently quite weak, but she seemed to have a special connection with her parents.

Wanda thought a second and made a decision. "Come on. We're going after him. And this time, we're going to kill anyone who tries to hurt Kurt."

Samuel Sterns looked at the young man in his charge. "Hello, Calvin, wakey-wakey."

Calvin Rankin got up from the table. "What's happening, Mr. Sterns?"

Mr. Sterns raised an eyebrow. "Reach out to me with your mind." He began thinking very hard.

Calvin discovered a mild sort of telepathic connection to the green man. Concentrating on it, he suddenly became very... lustful for something. Lust was the only word he could use, but it wasn't lust for sex. It was lust for information.

Mr. Sterns handed Calvin a book. "Read this."

Calvin began reading, and as he did so, his forehead grew slightly and his skin gained a trace of green. He scanned the pages very quickly, and Sterns calculated that he was reading about a page every fifteen seconds. It usually took Mr. Sterns seven or eight seconds.

"We are bringing in someone else." Suddenly, in walked Warren Worthington III. "So what was I called in for?" he asked cheerfully. "My father told me that our defensive industries needed my assistance on something.

"Please use your wings."

Warren nodded and took off his jacket, revealing his wings and flying a short distance in the surprisingly large and tall room.

"Concentrate on him," directed Mr. Sterns.

Calvin did, and suddenly wings sprouted out of his back.

"Excellent."

When everyone who had gone out was back at the mansion, Logan noticed the note stuck to the door. "I'm going after him. Talia is coming with me. We're no safer here than out there, so don't worry about us going out." Reading this, Logan snarled.

"What's wrong?" asked Storm.

"The Witch has taken the Elfling. They're trying to find Elf."

"How?" asked Scott. 

"I don't know - perhaps it has to do with Talia's telepathy," remarked the Professor. "Remember, her telepathy played a role in her finding Kurt in Switzerland. Perhaps the relative weakness of her telepathy is compensated for by its precision in locating people."

Talia was riding on the sidecar of one of the motorcycles, which Wanda was driving. 

Wanda was getting very worried about not only Kurt's current predicament but also over the question of how to break the story of Talia's origin to her. Now that she was asking questions about male/female relationships, it would only be a matter of time before she questioned her parents about the circumstances of her own birth. As Wanda recalled, realizing that your parents produced you through sex was a very jolting thought the first time you realized it, even though in her case her mother had been dead long before she thought about such things, and so she had been able to look at that half of the equation more objectively. The idea, however, of Magneto - helping to make babies - it just seemed wrong to her, although it looked like it was going to happen a second time with Rogue. Great, now Wanda would have a stepsister or stepbrother, who was also Kurt's stepniece or stepnephew. 

Explaining anything to Talia about her origins, of course, would have the added difficulty of the fact that Kurt and Wanda had not chosen deliberately to conceive a child, nor to have sex, for that matter had really considered being in any sort of relationship at all, even friendship. It was hard enough to explain the birds and the bees in a normal situation. But Wanda would also have to decide whether or not to explain the bird-and-beekeeper to Talia as well. Instead of, "Mommy and Daddy loved each other very much," she would have to say "A man named Nathaniel Essex liked your father and mother's DNA very much, and so he drugged them and had them..." She wondered if it would be better to simply pretend that she and Kurt were lovers and that Talia was the result of one of their encounters. In a few more weeks or months, the first part of this characterization might well become true.

For her part, Talia had forgotten all of her questions about Rogue and about the people on the soap opera. She had different concerns right now. She didn't know what was happening to her, but since her distress at her father's kidnapping by Graydon she had developed a headache. Having considered herself to be a "little trooper" for most of her short life, she didn't want to say anything, but she was in great distress. And not only her head. The rest of her body felt all tingly, and she felt as if there was some sort of psionic energy bursting inside of her. Whenever she used telepathy, she felt this strange sort of connection to whomever was nearest her. Not like the way she felt connected to her father, an awareness of where he was, but rather some sort of awareness of their body, what it actually felt like to be them.

What no one realized is that someone else was following Kurt. Someone who had tapped into the phone line, and found out about Murphy's Dock and who had driven her car immediately there.

"Ahh..." thought Laura. "What a good thing that I slept with that weird nerdy kid. Arcane of something like that. I never knew there was a way to tap into phone lines so that you could listen in with your cell phone."

Peter Parker meanwhile was trying to track Jameson's location from home using a spidey-tracer he had managed to put on the man when he had been carted off by the FOH goon squad to be... whatever they did to traitors. Parker had quickly gone back to home [A/N in my story, Peter Parker is a freshman in college and is still living with Aunt May] after the incident to see where they were taking him. Unfortunately, it appeared that the tracer had been discovered and removed, as his computer had recorded that the signal had died soon after Jameson had left Polotown. 

Suddenly there was a knock on the door. When Peter answered it, he saw a beautiful blonde with a silver ring around her right eye.

"Hello, Mr. Parker. A friend and I have been watching you. I don't think that you believe that FOH crap, and I want to know if you can help us to fight the organization from within - if that's not what you are doing already."

"Who are you?"

"The name is Tandy. Tandy Bowen."

Meanwhile Murdock and Farmer were discussing with Carlton the plans for the following Monday.

"So let me get this straight," asked Murdock. "We get Jameson into work and have go to the top of the building, ostensibly because someone called him up there. Then this speedy kid confronts him and taunts him with anti-wild-type [A/N in case you've forgotten, wild-type means non-mutant] slogans. Then Miss Ferguson teleports in and grabs him, and gets into a fight. He gets close to winning, but in the end she uses her powers to teleport him a few feet off the building. He falls to his death, and then she teleports to the ground, and the demon-guy teleports in, too."

"Yes," replied Carlton, "They will attack carefully placed FOH members - only no one will know that they are FOH members. Then a few of our other agents will suddenly appear out of the crowd and shoot the two mutants to death. We'll capture the speedy kid and he will confess that he and a bunch of other mutants are all trying to start a war to wipe out us normals. Then we will get a lot more acceptance and the mutants will get a lot less."

Farmer nodded. "It's a pity, really, that unless we force the issue, the mutant's real agenda will never come out. It's a shame we have to lie a little, but the larger point is true, after all, so it evens out in the end."

Carlton nodded. "Sometimes you need to make things worse to make them better."

"How are we going to get them to do what we want?" asked Farmer.

Carlton smiled. "We will fill them with a murderous desire to kill Jameson and the selected 'targets' we plant in the crowd. You see, we have captured another mutant recently, and unless he does what we ask, we will torture him to death. We have him hooked up to a machine that will tell us if he tries to deceive us. He will fill these other mutants with a murderous rage in order to save his own life."

"Who is he?" asked Murdock.

"His name is Wyngarde. Jason Wyngarde. He calls himself Mastermind."


	9. Later on Saturday

****

Chapter 9 Later on Saturday

Disclaimer: It all belongs to Marvel, except for my original characters, of course. But if Marvel wants to use them, they can. Feel free to post this, or any other Glaivester fic, anywhere, but please notify me so I can brag about it.

The X-Men were at a loss as to what to do. Wanda's powers were somehow running interference so that Cerebro could not detect her or T.J., and Kurt's powers were being suppressed so he was also not detectable by Cerebro - not that it was that good at detecting very specific locations anyway.

"Damn it!" hollered Professor Xavier. If they'd stayed, we might've been able to use them to detect where Kurt is and they could have sent us off after him. We could've plugged Talia into Cerebro to get a better idea -she has some special connection with her dad.

"Listen," said Cain, "if you find him, let me talk to Graydon."

"Why?" asked Xavier.

"I understand him, I might be able to get through to him and help him to see the error of his ways and release Kurt."

"And why do you think you would? We've extended every kindness to him..."

"Charles, I understand him, you don't. I didn't know I was a mutant until I met Mr. Sinister, so I was in the same exact boat as Graydon. My brother was special, I wasn't. I understand how he feels." 

Meanwhile, Graydon had managed to get Kurt to the Jasper building, where on one floor the FOH had their offices. They were theoretically there under the auspices of the Carlton Trust, a charitable organization, but the Trust had moved most of the charitable work to other offices and the executor of the trust, Mr. James Carlton, was concentrating on his Friends of Humanity work there.

"What are you going to do?" asked Graydon to Mr. Carlton, who had arrived from his Washington office that day, and who had immediately asked to see the young man.

"Come and see. By the way, I am very proud of you. It took a lot of courage to overcome family loyalty and to turn in your brother for the greater good. If you hadn't, mutants would be a lot closer to finally completing their designs and taking over the world."

"I have family loyalty," replied Graydon. "I just don't define family by blood. By genes, I mean - well, I define it by one gene, I guess, but..."

"I understand. You are an exceptional young man." He placed a strange-looking helmet on Graydon, and then another on himself, and opened a door.

They came into a room where on a table lay Mastermind. Everyone in the room had special helmets on.

"These prevent him from getting into our heads," explained Carlton. "We are going to use him to bring out the mutant's desire to kill, so they won't be able to disguise their true hatred of humanity. Then we will set them loose on that human-traitor to his species, J. Jonah Jameson. When they kill him, humans everywhere will see that only wild-type humans are really humans. Mutants are nothing more than beasts."

Graydon nodded.

Just then, Kurt was brought in by Farmer and Murdock, who had taken him earlier, just after Graydon had arrived. "Okay, we got him tied up nice and tight."

"Excellent." Carlton turned to Jason Wyngarde. "Mastermind, do your stuff."

"This is no good, Tyrone," explained Tandy.

"We have all of these photos that Peter took."

"No," argued Peter, "she's right. We know who the people are, but I didn't bother to get any footage of them talking, nor did they say anything technically illegal. They did talk about using bio-weapons to take away mutant's powers, but technically that isn't illegal, and they did not talk directly about killing mutants. They did discuss eradicating the X-gene, but later speakers clarified that they would do so through legal means, changing the laws to get mutants rounded up and sterilized. I don't trust them to avoid vigilantism, of course, but everything they said could be construed as legal, and there are enough people sympathizing with them that prosecuting them would be difficult. Besides, they are pretty tight. If worst comes to worst, they could deny everything; it's my word against theirs."

"So," asked Tyrone, his face barely visible in the darkness that enveloped him, even in the brightly lit warehouse where his hideout was, "you can do nothing."

"I don't have enough yet, especially with Jameson captured, to cause them much pain. You need a vigilante to help you."

"So you are useless?" asked Tyrone. Good grief, thought Peter, does he always sound this depressed?

"No, I'm not. I have a deal with a superhero. I provide him publicity, and he tells me where he'll be so I can get camera shots of him."

"You -" Tandy stammered, "you're the one who takes pictures of Spider-Man for the Bugle?"

"Shhhh! It's a secret!" Peter put his index finger to his lips. "Listen, give me half an hour and I will get him."

Laura Kelly was spying the entrance to the Jasper building. Not being able to find parking, she kept driving around, visiting the front of the building every fifteen minutes. She would rescue Kurt, and then he would owe her one. And she would add to her collection.

Wanda had managed to park and find a place to spend the stay while looking for Kurt. She technically was underage, which should have made it impossible to get a room but many places wouldn't care if you paid and promised not to tell anyone about the violation. She had to pay extra for her daughter, who had on an image inducer to make her look like a cute but normal dark-haired little girl.

Unfortunately, Talia had lost the "signal," and all they knew was that Kurt was somewhere in Manhattan.

Finally, Wanda noticed something wrong with Talia. "What is it, dear?" she asked.

"I don't know, Mommy. I'm hot, and tingly, and I have a headache, and I feel like I'm going to throw up."

"Uh-oh," whispered Wanda. "Uh, Talia, any other feelings?"

"I - I want to be you, Mommy. I want to know what it is like to be you."

"Oh my... Talia, I think you're manifesting."

"What?"

"You're getting your powers - at least one of them. As I recall, possession is one that they talked about."

"Posse... poss... what?"

"Possession. It means you can take over another person's body. Don't tell anyone - I mean, no one outside the Institute. They already think Kurt is a demon. Telling them you can possess people - oh no. Bad idea."

Talia lay down on the bed. Wanda went out to get some water for her, when she bumped right into Laura Kelly.

"What are you..."

"Same as you. Looking for Kurt. I know where he is. Do you?"

"N... no, I don't..."

"Good!" Wanda immediately regretted having revealed her ignorance. "I'll help you rescue him, but at a price."

"What? I'll pay anything."

"Let me get him for a night. Just one. I don't want to break up you and his little fling you got going there. And I certainly don't want anything bad to happen to his daughter. I just enjoy the sport of - 'collecting' rare and exotic people. Just once and I'll never bother you again."

Desperate to find Kurt before he got hurt, Wanda agreed.

Meanwhile, Tabby and Kitty had forgotten about finding Kurt for a short time, as they had been told that there was nothing they could do until Logan came back with more information. Logan had earlier gone out to see if he could track Wanda and Talia, while the Professor kept trying to find someone using Cerebro.

"So," asked Tabby. "Tabitha LeBeau, Tabitha Smith-LeBeau, or Tabitha Lebeau-Smith?"

"Hm..." replied Kitty. "I don't know. But I know I can't hyphenate my last name, I mean Katherine Marko-Pryde? Mark o' Pride? I'll sound like some Irish version of a Looney-Tunes character."

Outside, Gambit and Juggernaut were listening in.

"Well, mon ami," smiled Gambit. "Let's hope Kitty's not as unstoppable as you, non?"

"Grrr...." was all that Cain could say.

As all of this was going on, the Red Skull was languishing in his prison in Mexico. His services had yet to be called on by Sinister. Apparently he had not found anyone yet whom he wanted to breed the Red Skull's mutant seed with. Suddenly he was approached by a fearsome-looking man.

"Who... who are you?"

"I," said the man in a very deep voice, "am Apocalypse."

"What do you want?"

"Sinister is mad. But I can free you from his grasp. But first you must promise to help me after you get out?"

"How can you trust that I won't betray you?"

"Because if you help me, I will be able to give you power beyond your wildest imagination. The power to let the Aryan master race rule once more."

The Red Skull's smile immediately showed that he was interested.

The fool, thought Apocalypse. I will help him. But as long as he brings about the next evolutionary cataclysm, what care I if his so-called "master race" survives or not?


	10. Sunday

****

Chapter 10 Sunday

Disclaimer: It all belongs to Marvel, except for my original characters, of course. But if Marvel wants to use them, they can. Feel free to post this, or any other Glaivester fic, anywhere, but please notify me so I can brag about it.

Wanda sat at the restaurant, clearly unhappy about her deal with Laura, but unable to think of another way to help Kurt. Talia sat next to her, using an image inducer to hide her appearance. She was eating her fifth Belgian waffle, and Wanda was nervous that someone would sense that something was amiss. Wanda was only thankful that Sinister's treatments had made Talia mature faster than they had increased her overall metabolism, or she would have been eating twenty or thirty waffles.

Just then, Laura walked in. She had spent the night in an apartment with some of her college-aged friends, who had offered to let her crash there whenever she was in New York. Walking in, she spotted Wanda, and a victorious smile spread over her face as she considered what she was going to say.

"So," she started, sitting down. "We know that Kurt is in the Jasper building. If you'd like, I am certain that I can find a way to get you in there."

"How?"

"I have my ways." To Wanda that sounded like Laura was saying that she would use sex appeal. Oh well, whatever worked.

"And then I suppose we can use Talia to find Kurt - if we can re-establish a link?"

"Exactly."

"And then I use my powers full force to cause chaos, etc. etc. etc.?"

"Yup. And we bust Kurt outta there."

"And then you get to spend the night with him." Wanda was obviously less than thrilled.

"Yup. The whole night."

Talia didn't like where this was going. She still had only the vaguest notion of what sex was, that it was somehow connected to having babies and that it involved nudity - or had Laura suggested that it might not need to? But she knew that Laura was upsetting her mommy. And she knew that she didn't want her poor mommy upset.

"When should we do this?" asked Wanda.

"Tomorrow at 8 am."

"So, what we know is that they will take Jameson to the Bugle at some point," asked Spider-Man to Tandy. This was the second meeting in as many days, or the third if one counted the meeting with his alter ego.

"Yes."

Tyrone explained: "We know that he will be on the top of the building, and that he will probably be killed, but that is all."

"Do you know when?"

"Actually, yes. Around 9 am." Tyrone pulled back his face so that it was once again completely cloaked.

"And so we appear out of nowhere and rescue him."

"Exactly," said both Tandy and Tyrone at once.

Back in Mexico, Rahne Sinclair stepped out of the enhancement device. Surprisingly enough, she looked absolutely normal.

"Now," commanded Sinister, "change."

The alterations were immediate. Rahne grew in stature to ten feet, and grew hair all over her body. Per usual, much of her clothing was absorbed into her skin. She growled low. Lines and circuit-like accoutrements accented her entire frame.

"Excellent," hissed Sinister.

Ms. Dexter smiled at her "father." She then spoke up: "Nathaniel, we have determined that the Wagner embryo implantation was a success. In less than nine months, Talia Josephine Essex will be born."

"Excellent. I already have a codename for her."

"What is it?"

"She is the clone of the daughter of Nightcrawler, who was to be the mother of the Nocturnals. She is a creature of the night, and a supermutant. She will be Ubernacht."

[A/N Rahne is supposed to look like a more Horseman-like version of Maximus Lobo].

"WHAT?" demanded Principal Kelly. "No, no, no. You're lying. All mutants lie..."

"Listen, bub," snorted Logan to the guest at the mansion, "I don't know where your daughter is. She came here, saw Kurt, and then left. I am certain he did nothing with her!"

Kelly's heart sank. He knew exactly what had happened. She had gone off after Kurt. Despite his daughter's brightest attempts, he knew about her proclivities and that she had a thing for unusual guys. In fact, it was part of the reason that he so hated mutants.

"Listen," said Hank, softening a little. "If we hear from her, we'll tell you, okay?"

"Oh, all right! But don't think that I think that you are doing this out of the goodness of your heart! Young Wagner is probably raping her or something!" Kelly turned and began to leave.

At this, Logan grabbed Kelly by the scruff of his neck. "Never, ever accuse Kurt of something like that again, or I will make you into a rug. Got that?"

Kelly gulped and nodded. He then took off as fast as he could.

As he walked down the path, he spotted a very large man and a reddish-haired man in battle armor hiding behind some snow-covered topiary [A/N in case you didn't know, that means shrubs cut to look like things]. The large man put his finger to his lips. "Shhh!"

"What are you hiding from? Decent humans?"

The man in battle armor shook his head. "Somet'ing very, very scary."

Kelly shook his own head in disgust and walked down the path a little further to see two mutants from school, Tabitha Smith and Katherine Pryde, walking around in the snow that had fallen the night before. Each one was holding mistletoe over her forehead.

"Hiya, Prince!" shouted Tabitha.

"Like... Principal Kelly," gulped Katherine.

"Hey, didja see a hunky Cajun or a big brute walk by? 'Cause we're lookin' for them."

For once deciding to show mercy to some mutants, Kelly just shook his head and sprinted the distance to the gate.

"Gosh," scowled Kitty. "Now I know how Kurt felt that Christmas he tried to get me to kiss him."

"Oh, Gambit!" hollered Tabby. "Gambit! Juggy! Oh, Juggy!"

"There you are!" said Kitty suddenly. "Wait!" 

Juggernaut had picked up Gambit and had begun running. He quickly met some of the front lawn's shrubbery, but kept plowing through, destroying quite a few old and heretofore-thought indestructible yews and buckthorns.

"I didn't know guys played hard-to-get," commented Tabitha.

"I know!" agreed Kitty. "They'll never get girlfriends at this rate!"

Farmer, Murdock, and Epstein were looking at the mutants before them. Epstein had come from Washington, as Carlton had important business to attend to in Boisei, and it was felt that at least one senior FOH member ought to be here.

"What do you think of Jameson?" asked Epstein of Kurt.

"I hate him and want to kill him!" growled Kurt.

"Rip him limb from limb," answered Clarice.

"And dance on his dead body!" chuckled Pietro.

Farmer nodded in approval. Murdock grinned. Epstein just raised his eyebrows a little.

"Tomorrow then at 8:30 we will leave. We will be in position at 9 am," he stated, and then left.

That night, Wanda spent the night in the apartment with Laura's friends. Apparently they were having a bong party, but Wanda managed to turn in early and had a small room to herself and Talia, free from the bad influences in the living room.

As Wanda looked about, she was surprised at how many tie-dyed tapestries one could fit in such a small room, as well as the amount of grateful Dead memorabilia that was in there. Poor Talia had such a bad headache that she couldn't appreciate any of it, and Wanda was constantly applying a cold compress that she had obtained from the living room, which also served as a kitchen. The compress had long ago stopped actually being cold, but Wanda had no desire to leave her little sanctuary and venture out into the horrors of bongdom that constituted Laura and her friends in the living room. It was only because of the fact that one of the people in the "motel," (and that was a charitable term) in which Wanda was staying had offered money for "services rendered," that she had agreed to leave. Particularly because the man had been eyeing Talia in a way which had suggested to Wanda that she might have been the target of his attentions. She had seen enough victims of pedophiles who had ended up in the mental institution due to post-traumatic stress and the like that she was extremely cautious about such things.

As she finally drifted off into sleep, she consistently saw images of Kurt drowning, and being rescued by a tremendous harpy with a mouth full of fangs, saving him just to bite him as soon as he was in her hands. The face of the harpy was always that of Laura. And so she slept a fitful sleep that night.


	11. Things Go Wrong

****

Chapter 11 Things Go Wrong

Disclaimer: It all belongs to Marvel, except for my original characters, of course. But if Marvel wants to use them, they can. Feel free to post this, or any other Glaivester fic, anywhere, but please notify me so I can brag about it.

It was just after 8. Wanda was standing outside the Jasper Building, and Laura, was talking to one of the men in the reception area to the building. After a little flirting, she managed to get some information on who was in each floor. After hearing it said that on the eighth floor there had been some strange goings-on, and about strange packages being taken up there, she immediately decided that that was the floor to be on. A little more flirting, and a little show of leg (Wanda did not care to speculate as to Laura's state of dress underneath her outermost layer of clothes, and had decided that she did not care if Laura did a striptease if it helped them to find Kurt), and the receptionist directed her towards a man who worked on that floor.

Laura immediately began to flirt with this man and then, upon being rejected, repeated her earlier performance with the receptionist and was directed towards a second man working on the eighth floor. This man was more receptive to flirting, and immediately agreed to show her where he worked.

"Listen, could my friend over there come too?" She pointed at Wanda. "Later today she'll be taking her niece with her parents and she and I can show you a _really_ good time."

The ruse worked, and Wanda was soon being taken to the eighth floor. She had on hippy-ish clothes and a blonde wig, so that she would not be recognized by anyone, who might have seen her on the news during the sentinel attack.

"What's behind that door?" asked Laura to the man next to her, pointing to a closed door in the hallway. 

"Oh, nothing," said the man, but his nervous reaction suggested otherwise. Wanda, who was behind Laura, immediately picked up on this. She decided to make her move on the way out.

As it was, she didn't have to wait long. Murdock, who was a large blond man with sideburns, suddenly came out of a doorway and stopped the junior FOH member and Laura.

"What the Hell? You don't bring strangers in here! Now beat it!"

Laura, Wanda, and the junior FOH member were pushed to the door. Little Talia had managed somehow to escape everyone's notice, and she darted off. Coming to the closed door, Wanda suddenly lifted her hands and hexed it as powerfully as she could. It crumbled before her, and standing in the doorway were a dark-haired man [A/N Farmer] and a rather dazed-looking Kurt and Pietro. There was also a pink girl with green eyes.

"Well, another mutant and her friend, apparently," stated Murdock coldly as he clasped a collar around Wanda's neck.

Around 8:45 am, Spider-Man, Cloak, and Dagger were huddled behind a protrusion on the roof of the Daily Bugle, waiting to see what happen next. Very suddenly, something flashed past them. Then again. Suddenly it hit Spider-Man on the chin, and threw him back. Spider-Man tried to fight it, but he couldn't see whatever it was because it was moving so fast.

In five minutes, Dagger and Spider-Man had been knocked out, and Cloak had disappeared to someplace in order to figure out what to do.

"Good work, Murdock," said Epstein.

"I though that it might be good to send the speed-freak up ahead of time to scout out the roof." Kurt, Jason, Clarice, Wanda, and Laura were in the back two rows of the van. Murdock, Epstein, and Farmer sat in the front two rows. Wanda, Jason, and Laura were tied up.

Stopping at the _Daily Bugle_ building, Farmer got out of the van. Jameson, in a trance, had followed them in his own car, which they had managed to get the night before. Graydon Creed was in the car with him to make certain he didn't come out of his trance.

"We will make the move in less than ten minutes," said Murdock. Everyone began to move into position. Everyone was hustled off and taken up into a apartment in the building next to the _Daily Bugle_. Mastermind's power was used to keep Wanda and Laura quiet; although there was not enough time to do a full brainwashing, Mastermind could at least make them unable to speak or make noise.

J. Jonah Jameson was rather taciturn when heading up to his office that day. His usual grumpiness was gone, replaced by an almost total obliviousness. He didn't even take off his winter jacket, but walked into his office and started pacing in full winter regalia.

"Sir, we need your approval on this contract," his secretary told him a minute after he had arrived. He signed it immediately without even looking at it, and then commented that he had to go up onto the roof and think.

On the roof, he walked around in the freezing cold, shivering due to the fact that he had neglected to bring a hat. Suddenly Pietro appeared right in front of him.

"Dirty human!" scoffed Pietro. "You normal people think you are so great! Well, mutants are the new superior race! We will inherit this planet, not you obsolete Neanderthals!"

Pietro slowly backed Jameson toward the edge of the roof, so that the argument could be seen in the street below. Jameson's back hit the railing.

As if on cue, an FOH agent on the ground screamed, "What's going on up there?" Everyone on the street looked up.

It was difficult to see anything on the top of the _Daily Bugle_ building, as it was 46 stories high, but a few well-prepared souls had brought binoculars and helped everyone else to see that something was indeed happening on the top floor. Within minutes, TV news crews were running to the area, and the Bugle's own reporters were clamoring for space on the roof.

Suddenly, in all of the hubbub, just after a news helicopter had arrived, a hole opened in the air and a pink teenager with green eyes and pointy ears jumped out. Pietro was raving about how evil humans, by which he meant wild types, were, and how we was looking forward to seeing them all die. The pink girl approached Jameson threateningly.

Unnoticed by anyone, a small blue girl slipped out from under the FOH's van where she had been hiding, and began scaling the building next to the _Bugle_ building, where she had seen her mother taken.


	12. Nocturne to the Rescue

****

Chapter 12 Nocturne to the Rescue

Disclaimer: It all belongs to Marvel, except for my original characters, of course. But if Marvel wants to use them, they can. Feel free to post this, or any other Glaivester fic, anywhere, but please notify me so I can brag about it.

Jameson was being threatened by Pietro and by Clarice, who had suddenly 'ported onto the roof. She grabbed Jameson around the waist, and began squeezing him in a big bear hug.

On the street, people were staring up at the building. On the roof itself, dozens of reporters were outside recording events as they happened. At least half a dozen were from newspapers other than the Bugle.

In the building next door, Wanda was tied to a chair. Kurt was standing next to her, growling at her.

"See?" gloated Murdock. "He hates even mutants when they look normal enough. He only likes freaks like himself!"

Suddenly there was a noise on the outside window. Murdock turned around to see a small blue girl holding onto the window with two feet and a hand, and punching the window with her other hand. He turned to the window and pointed a gun at it.

This was a mistake. Although Kurt had been programmed by Mastermind to hate all wild-type humans except for Farmer, Murdock, Carlton, and Epstein. Even mutants who looked human enough were targets, except for Pietro and Mastermind. But he hadn't been told to hate mutants who looked unusual. Or to suppress his fatherly instincts. Hell, they hadn't even known that he was a father, and Mastermind had not seen a need to tell them. He couldn't lie, but he was never asked about it, and so he said nothing.

When Kurt saw Murdock about to murder his daughter, he grabbed him, teleported him outside, and then teleported back in without him. Murdock fell screaming to the ground below, before Kurt realized that he Murdock was someone whom he was supposed to protect. Farmer immediately raised a gun to Kurt, who was just standing there in shock.

"No!" screamed Epstein. "We can't kill him, not yet. I should have been more thorough in the programming I had Mastermind do! He must have overridden the 'don't hurt the FOH' command because Murdock had threatened that - that thing that's like him!"

"It's probably his daughter," observed Farmer. "She looks just like him." He didn't like Murdock, and was just as happy to see him killed. Getting rid of mutants was one thing. Gratuitous cruelty of the type displayed by Murdock was quite another.

"Jason," asked Epstein. "Tell the blue one not to care about his daughter."

Just at that moment, T.J.'s strength was multiplied by adrenaline. Already being somewhat stronger than an average little girl of about six, she suddenly had the strength to cause a crack in the window. She pounded the window, and it cracked more. Kurt was just standing there, dazed, and trying to fight off the programming that Mastermind was pumping into his brain.

The window was cracking even more. She was almost in. Just then, Kurt relaxed. The programming had set in.

"Farmer, don't shoot the child," said Epstein. "Let the blue one kill her. That way we won't be legally accountable. They can't prove we told him to do so."

"Kurt," said Epstein. "Kill the girl."

That, it turns out, was a bad command to give. A fatal mistake that ended the plans of the Friends of Humanity for that day. Kurt teleported outside and grabbed T. J. And then she disappeared.

From Talia's perspective, her headache suddenly exploded, and pain shot through her body, and then suddenly she felt a connection with her father. A connection so total, that she could feel everything he felt. Suddenly she felt her body go entirely numb - and then - suddenly she felt a lot bigger. She noticed that she apparently had organs that she hadn't had a few seconds earlier - male organs, she would later find out. She felt stronger, and suddenly had a sense of the area around her. Instinctively she knew she could teleport.

She had possessed her father.

BAMF! Suddenly she was in the room, with Epstein and Farmer.

"Where the hell did the little girl go?" sputtered Farmer.

"I'm right here!" shouted Kurt/Talia. He/she teleported behind Epstein and Farmer and stood on his/her arms and then kicked them forward.

"Jason!" screamed Epstein. "Stop him!"

"I- I can't!" Mastermind couldn't seem to find the consciousness in the body. Suddenly the little girl and the teenage boy had merged, somehow, with the girl apparently taking over, but the result was an unreadable jumble in the mind.

"Talia! You've manifested your first power!" hollered Wanda.

"What to do, Mommy?"

"Get me out of my restraints!"

Kurt/Talia grabbed Wanda and teleported her out of the restraints. Then he/she looked out of the window. Wanda looked at Farmer and Murdock. Freed from her collar, she put up her hands and threw them against the wall.

Kurt/Talia looked over to the other building. "Is Uncle Pietro on the roof over there?"

"Yes, dear, but..."

BAMF!

Clarice was about to 'port Jameson off the building with a well placed bolt of portal energy, when Talia, in Kurt's body, grabbed her and ported her back to the room with Wanda. Then Kurt/Talia 'ported again to the top of the building, and grabbed Pietro, teleporting him back as well. Wanda used her abilities to neutralize both of them.

Mastermind looked at Wanda. "I can help you. Please get me out of these restraints."

Talia didn't even think. She 'ported to Mastermind and 'ported him out of the restraints he was in.

If teleporting was exhausting to someone with that power like Kurt, it was far more exhausting to someone who was only borrowing the power and the body that contained it. Kurt/Talia collapsed suddenly, and Talia slowly rose out of her father's chest.

"Wow," said Wanda under her breath. "Looks like we have both given birth to her."

On the roof, J. Jonah Jameson suddenly came to again, and just then one of the reporters noticed that Spider-Man was lying unconscious on the roof of the Bugle in a relatively hidden area. No sooner had they approached him however, when a dark cloaked figure appeared above him, grabbed him, and disappeared.

Although it took a while to get everything sorted out, in the end Kurt, Pietro, and Clarice were cleared of all charges, Jason Wyngarde escaped, and Farmer and Epstein were taken to jail to await trial. Laura had managed to get away after answering a bare minimum of questions.

The next day, Christmas, Kurt, Wanda, Pietro, and Talia were all allowed to sleep in while the rest of the X-Men and Brotherhood (the latter of whom were spending Christmas at the mansion with the exception of Natalie, who didn't want Logan to know of her presence) opened their gifts.

That night, Laura Kelly managed to drive up to the mansion to claim her prize.

Wanda and Kurt stood there at the door, both grinning broadly.

"So," said Laura, "now I get to sleep with Kurt? Don't worry, Wanda, I'll give him back almost as good as I found him. It's just sex."

"Come in," said Kurt. He had been allowed to stay up very late and had been given access to the danger room tonight, and he had a plan for how to deal with this little issue here.

"So, is this the bedroom? I thought it was upstairs," said Laura uncertainly.

Kurt took out an epee [A/N fencing sword]. "Wanda promised that if you helped her, she would let you spend the night with me. She didn't say what we would spend the night doing. Welcome to your all-night fencing lesson."

The next morning, Laura, sweaty, bruised and scratched, and in a horrible and frustrated move, left the mansion.

Wanda and Kurt saw her off at the gate. She was driving an enormous BMW.

"You know," mused Wanda as Laura drove away, "that's an awful big car she's driving. Do you think she's compensating for a small cli-"

"Vanda!" warned Kurt, and Wanda said no more. She just smirked.

[A/N I've always wanted to use that joke]

Finis


	13. Epilogue

****

Epilogue

Disclaimer: It all belongs to Marvel, except for my original characters, of course. But if Marvel wants to use them, they can. Feel free to post this, or any other Glaivester fic, anywhere, but please notify me so I can brag about it.

After being cleared, Clarice Ferguson set out on her own. She was young, but her powers made it very hard for anyone to find her or stop her.

She came to where she was being called. She looked at the letters above the door. AIM.

"Come to me, my pretty one," said the voice. Clarice charged up.

BLINK!

She was inside. And she saw him.

"Yes, yes, you will do nicely. Tell Zemo we have the girl," he said to an agent.

Out from the shadows came George Tarleton. He was a bizarre creature, just a head, really, on a mobile platform.

"You, my dear, will help me to steal Cerebro. Calculation show a 79.9% chance of success on the first try."

Clarice bowed her head.

"We will free the Red Skull, and then use him to conquer the world! But I shall rule over him, for I am the MODOK!"


End file.
